A business disguised as a religion

The first congregation that I remember being a part of was full of older ones and hardly any other young families like ours. This was the 1980s and I would come to notice that among all the congregations we visited this demographic was extremely common. Lots of people who had been Jehovah’s Witnesses for a long time and almost never brand new people joining. If someone new appeared, it was usually because they had relocated to the area from another congregation. Again, no new people were joining the religion.

I would later come to learn that this was mostly because of the deep disappointment that many members had gone through in recent years, namely in 1975 when the end of the world was supposed to come but didn’t. No one spoke about this failed event in all my childhood, so it was likely a huge embarrassment for current members. Many had left the religion over this, because of course that should have proved to them that the whole thing was ludicrous, but many older ones chose to stay. There is much I would later learn about why this is, especially for older ones, but that will come later because at this stage of my life I was completely unaware of the significance of 1975.

In the previous chapter, I mentioned that the 1975 yearbook had actually honestly spoken about Rutherford and the board’s imprisonment over charges of sedition, but it is entirely unrelated that the year 1975 was also supposed to be the potential end of the world. There are lots of dates and numbers involved in this religion so you wouldn’t be wrong to get confused.

What I did notice in my congregation and in those around me was that everyone seemed happy enough to mill along, dutifully holding meetings every week and engaging in the ministry on weekends. I don’t recall seeing anyone display any feelings of discontent or negativity. Back then, the meetings were almost entirely different than they are now, and it was actually challenging to prepare for them and participate. Three times a year there was even a test that congregants took (the “Written Review” which was later called the “Oral Review” after it was upped to every two months) where you would answer questions that pertained to the books of the Bible that we were studying in our weekly meetings. One of the talks given during the midweek meeting was a ten minute part called the “Instruction Talk” that delved into the organization’s explanations for each book of the Bible, often pointing out the ways that these ancient verses actually foretold or foreshadowed things that were happening in our modern era. It was always fairly deep and involved, and if you didn’t study the material ahead of time (as you’re always supposed to if you’re a good JW) then you likely wouldn’t grasp the points and be able to explain them yourself.

Later in life, I would look back humorously on this deeper study that has since been abandoned for much lighter content. “Aren’t we glad the meetings are so much easier to enjoy now?” I said something akin to that statement on more than one occasion, as did others. What we were missing entirely in that sentiment was that the organization had completely dumbed down their rigorous and downright intense Bible study program because it was so ridiculously nonsensical and downright unappealing to interested ones who might attend these meetings.

The president of the religion at this time, Fred Franz, had been guiding their spiritual direction with his own unique flavor of personal quirk and out-of-touch decision making for many years. Even before he was president, he was basically the doctrinal mastermind of the religion as the previous president, Nathan Knorr, had been more of an administrator and not a religious authority. Franz had been in charge of the religion’s special brand of Christianity for decades and was likely responsible for much of the rather unique and outrageous doctrines being adopted by JWs during the post-Rutherford era. Not that the religion was unfamiliar with such things; just about any new medical practice was immediately rejected as satanic even under Rutherford’s lead. At least Franz wasn’t spouting rhetoric about gravity belts, as Rutherford had done.

One of the religion’s constant obsessions for most of their history was the concept of types and antitypes, which was their term for when a scriptural prophecy had an “initial” fulfillment in ancient times but actually held a “greater” modern-day fulfillment that only JWs knew about. Just about every single prophecy in the Bible somehow pertained to something else later in time, usually in our recent history or immediate future. C.T. Russell had built his founding religious movement around this concept (and stole many of his ideas from other religious figures, ironically) as a way to get people interested in his books and become his followers repeat customers, and the formula was still at work a hundred years later.

Some of these types and antitypes were so far reaching and invented that I honestly can’t believe anyone actually accepted them as fact (for example, the seven trumpets of Revelation were foretelling seven “landmark” conventions that JWs held in the early 20th century). More likely, as I now believe, people were just going along with the flow of the religion and quietly accepting what they were being told without bothering to think too deeply about it. It did give the religion a bit of a scholastic bent that set it apart from other Christian faiths, due to the supposed deep study that the organization was doing to expose the secret things of God, the hidden truths and “sacred secrets” that were actually found in the Bible for those that looked for them. Other religions were blinded by Satan and weren’t receiving Jehovah’s blessing which allowed them to decipher these “deep” things.

This is all loaded language, something attributed to cults as a way to control their members and build up a mystery around their beliefs to entice people into curiosity and interest. At the time, though, it was the only language I knew and it was completely normalized to me. If someone outside the religion could honestly and sincerely read the Bible and yet not understand its contents, then apparently the only way to learn the actual truth about the universe was to wait for JWs to knock on their door and study the Bible with them using one of their publications as a teaching tool. Even back then, I kept wondering: why would God limit someone’s ability to learn the truth if that was His ultimate goal anyway? Wasn’t the Bible His gift to mankind to help them come to know Him? Why would His Word need someone else to explain its meaning?

Questions like this built up in my mind as a youth, but the repetitive actions of going to meetings and participating in the ministry are designed to keep a person so busy and distracted that they don’t give much pause to what they are actually doing. Little thought, if any, is allowed to be spent on whether or not these actions really make sense in the grand scheme of things. God created the universe and directly influenced man over the centuries, but He doesn’t speak directly to people anymore because…reasons. He uses His organization, the Watchtower corporation, in order to accomplish this great preaching work that for decades involved selling books and magazines to people.

Selling printed material was the main business model of the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion up until 1990. I didn’t realize that it was a business, a corporation disguised as a religion, until much later in life. Paying for magazines up front myself was just the way it was, the thing that everyone was doing. My family put their hard-earned cash into contribution boxes so they could pick up a bundle of magazines which they would in turn sell to unsuspecting homeowners. The money never seemed to be about making a profit though, and it was literally pennies per magazine anyway. I think I remember selling two magazines at a time, “Watchtower” and “Awake!” as they’re called, for fifty cents. I’m sure the price fluctuated over the years but it seemed like it was barely enough to cover the cost of printing. That was the exact message that we were to convey to unsuspecting householders too; they weren’t really paying for life-saving truth, which should be freely shared, but instead they were supporting a worldwide work to help get this message out to even more people.

If you think this sounds a little sketchy, you’d probably be interested to know that “pioneers” received their literature for half-price. How thoughtful! Only, they were still selling the magazines and books to householders at full price, and though there was a bit of an unspoken rule that they could keep some of the leftover cash to top off their gas tanks or get a cup of coffee (a practice eventually condemned by Watchtower in a letter), the excess money was still expected to be contributed back to the organization to cover the printing costs of the literature that they had already purchased. So the discounted cost for pioneers was not as generous as it may have seemed on the surface.

This arrangement of paying up front for the literature that they in turn had to go sell to people was suddenly discontinued when I was still a child, a move that on the surface seemed to be so wonderful and altruistic. We were no longer going to charge for the literature but would just ask for donations instead. This followed the mantra of the Bible to “give free” what we had already received for free, namely the truth found in the Bible. Of course, it made so much sense that any real Christian organization shouldn’t be charging money for something that was billed as saving lives. That’s what those false religious ministers and televangelists did, and we can’t be like them. Well, not anymore, anyway.

The truth behind this change was that the Watchtower organization was closely following a court case involving another religious organization, Jimmy Swaggart Ministries, which was being hounded for sales tax from their religious profits. The precedent that this court case set would certainly impact Watchtower just as badly, so they attempted to influence the case by filing a “friend of the court” briefing (along with other religions) to basically argue that the profit margins of literature sales were so razor-thin already that paying additional taxes would hardly amount to anything substantial anyway. The case went to the Supreme Court and Jimmy Swaggart Ministries lost.

This caused a sort of silent shockwave whereby anything religious in nature that JWs were spending their personal money on had to now be given without direct cost to avoid the appearance that the organization was a business (which is definitely was/is). Not just the steady stream of literature for the ministry, but things like food at conventions and new book releases that were regularly released all had to be paid for now with only “donations” to cover the cost. No prices were ever required, and no one was forced to give any money, but now the flock was regularly manipulated into making sure they were truly spiritual and obedient to the scriptures that require true Christians to give of their time and funds freely. All that literature costs money to produce, don’t you know? You don’t want to make Jehovah sad, do you? He needs your money, and He dignifies you by letting you donate. What a loving yet cash-strapped Creator! He literally formed matter out of nothing but He can’t seem to conjure up any capital for His one true organization.

While this probably seems obvious to outsiders, I can guarantee that the average JW knew nothing about what was really going on with the court case and why the change was made so abruptly. Elders were given scant information in their confidential letters which indicated it had something to do with the Supreme Court, but no details were shared beyond what they were now required to do. The larger issue at hand was not just the actual money but the fact that if sales tax was collected from the proceeds of their printing business, that meant each individual JW who participated in the ministry and sold this literature would be required to fill out a tax form and maybe even be considered an employee or a sub-contractor. Things would get too complicated for the average JW, especially the older and more faithful ones, and participation in the ministry would become a cumbersome effort that might feel too much like a business arrangement and not an altruistic life-saving preaching endeavor. Also, some of them might be too clueless to follow through with the paperwork properly (because no one joins a religion just to work), and this would cause problems too.

The Watchtower organization steers clear of anything resembling this type of employee/employer arrangement, even refusing to call anyone in the religion a “member” because of the legal implication. Members of organizations have rights within that organization, from a legal standpoint, and Watchtower maintains an iron grip on its “members” in such a way that no individual JW can be allowed those rights. Oddly enough, no one questions this wordplay even though, for God’s one true religion, such matters hardly seem important at all. The Bible uses terms like “member” and speaks of congregations of first-century Christians as close-knit families, even substituting these “members” for their own mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers if necessary. And yet today, that same loving organization would entirely eschew any formality or legal rendering that might insinuate such close ties, or else they might face liability.

The shift away from charging a static fee for literature during my formative years made me honestly think the religion was changing for the better, and this contributed to the appearance that we were the only true Christians because all other churches tithed or begged for money on TV. Jehovah’s Witnesses never did such disgraceful things, and that gave evidence of God’s approval.

Over the next few years I was completely oblivious to the financial troubles that the Watchtower organization was facing from this point on. One of the ways that they operate at minimal cost in their printing facilities is to house and feed all of the members who work there, including maintaining a farm to grow their own food, and as long as money was flowing in from selling their literature in support of this business model, there was enough of a profit to keep things afloat. Once the new donation-only arrangement was enforced, money became more scarce for Watchtower. However, they still had financial gain from other endeavors too.

One of these money-making schemes was to finance construction loans for kingdom halls, or what any other religion would call a church. JWs famously reject most terms derived from mainstream Christianity as part of their loaded language indoctrination. Kingdom halls are built entirely from volunteer labor, however the cost of materials and other things still add up. Local congregations rarely had the funds on hand to rebuild or remodel, so they turned to the organization itself for this money, which they were told to do rather than seeking a loan elsewhere. Watchtower graciously lent its own funds to individual congregations at rock-bottom interest rates (at one time this rate was 6% according to what I have found in print). The congregation paid the loan out of their own pocket, and performed all of the labor themselves for free as well, so the cost to the organization was zero, and there was hardly any chance the congregation would default on the loan because this is God’s one true organization that He’s using on Earth, so the emotional manipulation of donating to the religion is at full force for large projects like this. Nowadays this arrangement has been even more streamlined for profit, but for now things were a bit simpler still. As a child, I knew nothing of finances and business operation. I would venture to say that most JWs don’t understand these concepts either due to lack of secular education (and maybe this is key to their complete rejection of higher education, among other things).

What I did know is that kingdom hall “quick builds” (where the entire building was constructed within days) were an impressive feat that often attracted positive attention from the community, and this was a great “witness” for Jehovah. The harmony and cooperation among the brotherhood was wonderful to see. No other religion that I knew of would enlist local members to perform literally all of the labor, on a volunteer basis with no wage paid to anyone.

There was also constant encouragement from the organization to grow and expand, even though these buildings were only being used twice a week in most cases (not including the brief meetings conducted each morning just before the day’s field ministry was organized). If each kingdom hall cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build, and a constant influx of donations was needed to maintain them, then the “need” for these buildings must indeed be great, much greater than I saw with my own eyes. I wouldn’t realize that the kingdom halls themselves were the business now that literature sales were not.

Remember, the kingdom halls were financed by the organization itself, not through banks or outside institutions. Watchtower made interest on construction loans to congregations, so each time a new kingdom hall was built it meant they would make a profit. The interest rate they charged was likely better than a bank would offer, which allowed them to provide this service at a perceived “hardship” or even loss in some people’s eyes, even though the organization itself bore no actual cost beyond the loan itself. Free labor performed the physical work, and free labor managed the loan paperwork, and donations from congregations supplied the payments for the loans. With minimal liability (I’d never heard of congregations not fulfilling their loan obligation, but at worst they’d only be out the cost of materials since the labor was free), Watchtower had a very good lending business going with this arrangement.

The thing is, when the loan was paid off, there was practically no incentive to continue donating anymore. Most of the money raised by local donations went towards paying this loan, and Watchtower was receiving interest payments but hardly anything else in the way of extra donations. Their literature was no longer sold, and voluntary donations from the field (from “worldly” persons and from the rank and file still donating for the literature they now gave away for “free”) were probably nonexistent in most respects. That 6% interest that the organization was earning was quite literally the main profit margin of the religion now, but when the loan was paid off after some years, the profit margin dried up and only voluntary donations were now being sent in. This amount was likely far less than they would receive if the loan was still active.

It took some years but a new plan was eventually developed that further cemented JW congregations themselves into the role of the religion’s main customers. Kingdom hall construction was no longer financed through interest-bearing loans, but now they were financed entirely from organizational funds with no cost passed on to local congregations. When this new arrangement was announced, it was received as a most welcome change. There was no longer a mortgage to be paid, and all donations received locally would simply be forwarded on to the branch office with the undercurrent heavily implied that we should just give what we can while keeping in mind that kingdom halls were still needing to be built and financed using whatever surplus we helped make available.

Only, this wasn’t the whole picture. Yes, the construction loans were done away with in favor of voluntary donations, but there was a new financial burden imposed on congregations now, and quite silently. Only elders are told of this, specifically that now, instead of a loan payment that eventually ended, congregations would pay a set fee based on the number of publishers (not “members”) into a joint “operating fund” account that all congregations sharing a kingdom hall paid into. At one point while I was privy to the information, the fee was $10.75 per publisher per month. The operating account paid all the local expenses like utilities and such, and kept a certain amount to cover a few months of expenses, but then all money in excess of this amount was forwarded to the branch office.

For a congregation of one hundred publishers (which is a typical modest size), $1,075 a month was expected to be deposited into the operating account. This figure was never advertised to the congregation, but if funds received through voluntary donations were not sufficient to cover this fee, as long as it was deemed realistic to demand such (meaning the local congregation was not entirely made up of impoverished parishioners), the elders would give talks that would guilt the congregation into upping their contributions. The money that flowed out of each congregation was neatly compiled and advertised with a one-sheet post on the information board somewhere inside the building. The numbers were all there, though the individual fee was not. Like with circuit assemblies, all that the congregation is made aware of is that there are “expenses incurred” and that these relate to the cost of maintaining the kingdom hall. Without a mortgage payment, there really is not much money required to operate a large residential building that is only ever occupied a handful of hours each week. Heating and cooling, electricity, toiletries, and other minor items are fairly low overhead and never amount to $10.75 per publisher. This cost per publisher is carefully calculated to appear to be just enough to cover basic costs ($10 a month does not seem like much to unsuspecting individuals) but is really all about generating money for the organization.

Also, since this fee is not advertised to publishers, most of them donate personally as well. After all, they believe that the organization is funded entirely by “voluntary” donations. This wordplay makes it appear that there are no fees being charged to anyone, which isn’t true, and it stirs congregants to want to donate directly to the organization above and beyond what they are already giving to their local congregation. They honestly believe that the organization only receives money from them if they specifically donate to the “Worldwide Work” instead of just helping to pay the bills locally. They don’t realize that their local bills include the fee for each publisher on record, and anything in excess of the actual local expenses gets forward on to the branch office anyway.

There are other donation “fees” that all congregations agree to send to the branch office. There was also the KHAA (kingdom hall assistance arrangement) and the TOAA (traveling overseer assistance arrangement) that received relatively small amounts each month. I’m sure that calling it an “assistance arrangement” instead of a cost/fee/duty was intentional. Individual publishers don’t get to decide where their donations go exactly, as all donations are pooled and distributed by the leadership.

All in all, a typical modest congregation (of which there are over 100,000 today) might be sending money to the branch office in an amount of only hundreds of dollars each month on a regular basis, but Watchtower also makes significant money when people die and leave everything to them. They unabashedly advertise that they accept trusts, wills, jewelry, frequent flier miles, or anything that can be sold or monetized for profit and advantage. Since they have always encouraged members to put off having children in order to more fully serve the interests of the religion, all of these childless couples that are growing old and dying can simply leave their scant estates to Watchtower instead. How thoughtful!

Because the profit model of Watchtower largely revolves around the monthly income of congregation per-publisher fees, and because there are no longer individual kingdom hall loans to accrue interest from, kingdom hall construction isn’t what generates revenue anymore (however the sale of these buildings is quite lucrative). The people are the revenue now, and the kingdom hall is just the place that centralizes and organizes them. Thus, the constant need for more physical buildings to house all of this explosive growth which fueled Watchtower’s interest gains (and which has severely dropped since the 1975 debacle) had all but stopped by the time I was an adult. Rarely was a new kingdom hall actually built in my area. Instead, the model shifted to cram as many people into existing kingdom halls as possible. If making money on loans wasn’t the main goal of the organization’s construction efforts, then this should have been happening all along. It doesn’t make sense to build more kingdom halls when there’s only two congregations sharing a building twice a week which comfortably seats twice as many people as the current size of each congregation, from a purely logistical perspective and assuming that making money isn’t the main goal of the religion.

Related to this shifted model, another interesting change that occurred which flew under my radar at the time was that local elders were no longer trustees of their individual kingdom halls. Three brothers from the body of elders used to be named on the deed of the building where they served. Now the branch office assumed ownership of everything, and could swoop in and do whatever they wanted with the kingdom hall. They used their new ownership powers to enforce a plan where congregations were merged and joined together to make better use of existing buildings. The construction department created a new arrangement for maintaining kingdom halls to extend their life using the free labor of its members, changing their previous Regional Building Committee (RBC) department into the newer flavor, the Local Design and Construction (LDC) department. Though it has the word “construction” in the name, there was virtually no construction happening. This was a program that trained people how to do basic upkeep of their kingdom halls (thus the word “local” included in the name to help reinforce the idea) to make sure the buildings were in good condition when the organization would eventually decide to sell them off. That last part is kept secret though so no one is thinking about that. Surely they wouldn’t give their full effort and enthusiasm if they knew they were cleaning and maintaining a house of worship that came with an expiration date.

That was where money could be made now. Like most large corporations with public-facing storefronts, real estate was the new business model. Kingdom halls no longer generated revenue through construction loans, but they did provide considerable profit when they were sold. After all, they were built using free labor, so the largest cost that most construction projects bore was nonexistent. In an area with multiple kingdom halls, it was likely that if necessary they could be consolidated. If six congregations were split across three kingdom halls, for example, and each kingdom hall housed only two congregations, it was quite easy to shift things around so that three congregations were now sharing each kingdom hall, which meant only two of the three were now needed. The third building could be put up for sale, likely to a different church. It apparently didn’t matter than the building was “dedicated” to Jehovah in a symbolic ceremony where someone gave a dedication talk to officially seal the use of the building for true worship. That dedication can be forgotten and revoked when the branch office decides that money is more important that Jehovah’s blessing.

This business model was heavily leaned upon in recent years when it was discovered how profitable it would be. But the idea couldn’t be presented to the average JW in exactly that way, or else it might appear that this religion is actually just a business. Instead, a “master plan” was presented (first to elders, notably, and only later to all publishers) that first of all relayed just how dire the need for new kingdom halls still is (completely untrue) and also that new kingdom halls would need to stop being built in residential fashion as most currently were and instead a new commercial design would be adopted. This new design would be more efficient and easier to maintain, according to Watchtower. What wasn’t communicated at all was that this new design would make the building much easier to resell at a later date, as it could be converted into a business more readily and not simply coopted by another church. In general, with the religious climate on a steady decline worldwide, the need for churches is at an all-time low, so the sale of residential-style church buildings is less attractive in the long term.

Watchtower is clever in the way they went about this, but it is a fairly standard operating model for large corporations. The real money to be made by any nationwide business is in the real estate of the buildings themselves, not the unique business conducted within them. The McDonald’s parent company doesn’t make money from hamburgers, any more than the Starbucks parent company makes money from coffee. Corporations make money by franchising their locations, whereby the franchisee bears all of the operating costs and even pays a hefty franchise fee to the corporation for the privilege of using their branding and namesake. Watchtower has shifted to this model with its kingdom halls and various facilities, including their film studios and headquarters no doubt. All of their buildings are an investment to be utilized in the short-term but eventually resold for a profit in the long-term.

For decades, they have owned prime real estate in Brooklyn, NY that they have since divested and sold off for potentially billions. Despite doing this for major profit, they still begged for money only a year or so later in an episode of JW Broadcasting, the monthly televangelist program they host. Instead of wondering why so much cash was needed so suddenly by the organization, the average JW (including me, I’m sad to say) responded to this call by upping their monthly donations which were now automated and pulled right out of their bank accounts each month. Never mind that the organization at this time started facing lawsuits and steep legal sanctions over their secret problem with child abuse that to this day is fiercely denied by them. More on that will come later.

What is most criminal about Watchtower’s behavior in this regard is that they aren’t honest with people about any of this. They don’t inform the average JW that a certain amount of money is expected from congregations each month, or that they make money exploiting free labor to maintain buildings that can be sold off for a profit, which the local publishers never see a dime from.

To the average JW, the religion is not a business at all but simply a very well-organized preaching effort that unfortunately requires their personal funds to sustain and operate but which God Himself influences and manages. This means that they can have full trust that their money is being used for the absolute greatest good, in the best ways possible, for better purposes than they could ever hope to accomplish on their own. They don’t understand the business operations of the organization, partly because they are purposely uneducated in such ways and literally prohibited from gaining that education, and partly because the organization itself promises them that Jehovah is controlling their donations. The divine being who created the universe is making sure that this hard-earned money is being used appropriately and responsibly by an American corporation with multiple investment wings and hundreds of millions of dollars in lawsuit settlements.

After all, is there any better way to spend your money than in support of God’s work?